Tag: Abstract

Four to Thirteen

Picking up where we left off
shouldn’t be too much of a hindrance
to us this evening. Sometimes
an elegant tail-end reception fiasco
is just what you need
to guarantee
that end-of-days proceedings
are kicked off in style.

Do we have a believable universe here? Do we have a character with whom we would like to share our collective journeys? If we have no character identification, then why is this even being proposed at all?

Are we so obsessed with plot that we fail to build our world model around anything else? I would say no, but I’ve been programmed to provide that answer. For you see, I come from simple means. My mother was a mushroom forager and my father took his canoe from out of the barn one day and paddled out of our lives forever. I had a herniated vertebra in my back from the ages of four to thirteen, after which time a medical miracle cure fixed it permanently. Now I only have to deal with the crippling daily hallucinations involving my needless slaughter at the hands of a cult of murderous clowns.

But enough about me, I’m sure you all have dealt with various traumas in your lives and you’d rather not hear the boring details of mine. You see, I’m generally a very simple person with very few wants or needs at the end of the day. I put on my pants one leg at a time, just like everyone else. Well, aside from the fact that I need to have my pants made custom to accommodate the extra leg I sprouted a little while back (maybe a complication from that miracle back cure, who knows?). Well, calling it a full-blown leg is a bit generous, but you get the gist.

Many Means

Incendiary pickled herrings
have been convinced to roost
regardless of aggregate happiness
in the face of comportment as jackal vendors
on the fourth Thursday in June (at least
the one where the werewolves play
without the convenience of a full moon).

Bobby Friday wanted more than anything else
to be looked upon with favor, that’s all.
Anything requiring more involvement
would surely end in disaster (from
where he stood, at least), so
he would only dare tread lightly
through the footpaths
mercilessly trampled for generations.
He concluded, unceremoniously, that
human interaction has many means
for existing, very few of which
actually entail anything enriching.

It was just at that moment that he noticed the bricked-in windows lining the building adjacent to his friendly neighborhood train station–the day before his birthday, of all days. This year it fell on a Thursday. What convenient bullshit, he thought.

Lil Yeller Fellers

I had quite the feisty colony of bees stored up,
only to leave them back in Georgia–
in the hands of my dingus brother, no less.
God, what kind of mess did I make of this?

I miss them lil yeller fellers, but
becoming a full-time yankee tartographer
means you need to make supreme sacrifices
for the good of the craft and its reception.

It’s bad enough
that folks have never heard of this field,
and even worse when they just shrug it off
like some kind of joke
without really stopping to think about it.

You know what? I don’t have the time
to convert the unbelievers anyway. Matter
of fact,
I’m gonna go get my bees back. Tartography
just ain’t what it used to be.

Microcosm

Belt the roast torpedo chicken espresso trepidation
between undertow scripture merriment
before tomorrow feels golf handler syndrome takers.

Upon victory garden memory quickeners
preside bacon cheerleaders,
content to scythe some grain,
unwind a bird line into chocolate cave platypuses.

Tom was a simple boy, never ventured too far away from his home because he figured home was a microcosm of the greater world, any unexplored tracts reserved for other people of existence, their place separate from his, and he was just fine with that.

Mingle amongst ribbon galoshes,
puddle champagne reed pushers beyond any barley crop–
unbeknownst to Gertrude,
widow’s fingers
trace forks and spoons
along the monument to any fallen porcupine quill,
infinitesimally uncomfortable through shadows and mean chickadees.

———-

Originally posted to WHARVED on 1/7/12,
entitled #81 (first numbered series)

No Such Luck

Journeyman centenarian, your
squadron of sheep hurlers
begged you to curdle off the cliff
while dangling circumlindrically–
as though in a play.

No such luck.

Life is a raised platform,
gawking peanut gallery
all around, over-adorned yaps
temporarily agape
toward a permanent problem.

The plight of the talented
is wasted on the non-observant.

Impressionology

Facile fabrication comes with half-price wine and a half-decent idea of what it means to be a cut-rate pilgrim on the eve of the seventh tardigrade.

So now, Jimber Unfletching Libberdijibbet (that’s his stage name) has a bone to pick with the absurd nature of his very existence on this here rock orbiting a mid-grade star of no particular distinction. For one: how could his sorry-ass soul have been picked to inhabit a corporeal manifestation of this godforsaken planet? His mind simply wasn’t malleable enough to adapt to such mental calisthenics, even if said activities only constituted a sixteenth of one morning each second Thursday after waterobics.

He needed a tutor of sorts to escort him down the row of unconcerned minds, so he could become one of those most-enviable kinds of folks who look so cool that their general demeanor forces them to do everything but justify the wherewithal that led the to cultivate such a persona in the first place.

But, after all, we happen to inhabit an age of severe impressionology. I can see I may have lost you on that last one. It’s essentially a myriad of minuscule multiplicities as seen through the eyes of numerous (some would say innumerable) individuals, wherein people tend to default toward the middle of the pack so as to avoid embarrassing themselves in front of those in the know.

I know.

Etched in Stone

Chastising champions comes as a natural pastime for the uninitiated rite-mogul-squishers, and it would come as no surprise to those in the clergy (no matter what people may have said about whom or what).

Now, it’s plain as day that you’re looking at me with more than a little bit of apprehension. I’m unsure of what would have prompted this skepticism, other than my various bouts of word vomit from time to time.

Ah, yes, so that would indeed be your reason. Okay, I can work with that. Quickly, now, just go ahead and patronize a chinchilla for a couple minutes while I grab the pre-moistened dentures from George Washington’s exhumed tomb.

Please, can’t you just do me this one favor? I promise that you won’t have to settle for submitting to my acerbic wit for much longer.

No, I’m not sure how much longer. But you of all people should understand that this, like all things, must pass. You’ll just have to take my word on that.

Aw jeez, fine, I’ll patronize this damn critter myself. I swear, you’re getting lazier and lazier by the minute.

Right, right. I know you’re not in the market to be compared to a stooge or a puppet for anyone, least of all myself. But that’s really beside the point right now, wouldn’t you say?

It’s not? Please do explain.

Well, of course I understand that not everything revolves around me. I mean, how narcissistic would I have to be…?

Okay, okay okay. But in my defense, I had a rat for a father and a pig for a mother. Or was it a pig for a father and a rat for a mother? I can never get those details straight. You see, my parents both died before I was born, so I’ve never been able to diagnose my unsatisfied situation.

I suppose you’re right. Let’s just say–if they both died before I was born, I must be one special SOB.

No, I am not lying to you. Everything I’ve said is 100% truthful, and you can quote me on that.

Anyway, let’s get back to brass tacks. Or, at least, aluminum pins. I don’t know what kind of fasteners you people use these days, and I’m not going to bother sweeping up the damn pencil shavings from all the times you’ve decided to update your vernacular just for the hell of it. I’m through with it, I tells ya.

What do you mean the chinchilla escaped?! It can’t have gotten far, let’s split up. You go upstairs, I’ll go around the corner for some tamales.

Tamales are actually all too relevant here, you pensive Polly! Listen, you’re just going to have to trust me again.

I’ll explain when you’re older. Now, do you want red sauce or green?

It has a huge impact, believe me. Every time a sauce choice is plucked from the bowels of obscurity, a quintessential jeopardy magnet gains a friend. That might as well be etched in stone.

Yes, I suppose you’re right. Bowels wouldn’t be the most apropos or salient image when you’re talking about food, but not everything exists to please your restrictive sensibilities, now does it? Just stick with the program here and you’ll be fine.

Exactly! I’m glad you’re starting to see it my way. A cherrywood beacon should have been activated upon completion of chinchilla patronization, but since the furry bugger absconded with our worthwhile afternoon, we have to improvise with a round of tamales. I don’t know how I can make this any clearer for you here. Now please, red or green?

You sure?

Okay, green it is. You poor bastard.